The following discussion of the background of the invention is merely provided to aid the reader in understanding the invention and is not admitted to describe or constitute prior art to the present invention.
Modern medical practice dictates that a subject undergoing medical treatment often have a variety of medical devices attached to their bodies during the course of treatment. These devices can range from intravenous lines to catheters and physiologic probes attached to insulated cable carrying one or more conductors, among other things. Many of these devices require the use of a length of flexible conduit that traverses the subject's body and connects to fluid supplies, monitoring stations, and the like. Various methods exist for affixing flexible conduit to a subject's body. However, because of differences in both s subject's size and the location on a subject's body to which medical devices are attached, an excess of flexible conduit often remains. At best, this excess of flexible conduit can be inconvenient to the patient by limiting comfort and mobility. At worst, an excess of conduit can lead to inadvertent removal of the medical device by entanglement or snagging of the excess conduit, which in turn can lead to unnecessary hospital alarms and the need to reinsert catheters or intravenous lines.
The present invention provides an apparatus and method of securing a length of flexible conduit to a subject, and adjusting that flexible conduit to a length tailored to the individual subject, in order to reduce or eliminate excess conduit traversing the subject's body.